Ion3 RC5 Released

The last release candidate for Ion3 has been released. “This release features a few minor fixes. If no major problems are discovered, this is likely to be the last ‘rc’ release before the first and hopefully final ‘stable’ release.” Ion is a tiling tabbed window manager designed with keyboard users in mind.

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Quite a few apps have their own non overlapping windows, I use 2 – eclipse and blender3d.

I tried ion for a while and was disappointed it didnt allow dealing with window tiling options with the mouse.

Splitting/Joining etc

Of course with the keyboard if faster…. whatever, but Im used to being able to do this with a mouse in other apps and Im sure they could provide both.

The biggest problem I had was that ion’s default key configuration conflicts with many applications I use. With many Alt+Key shortcuts I use in the gimp and blender. – this can be changed of course, but good defaults are important to addoption.

I tried ion for a while and was disappointed it didnt allow dealing with window tiling options with the mouse. Splitting/Joining etc

The biggest problem I had was that ion’s default key configuration conflicts with many applications I use. With many Alt+Key shortcuts I use in the gimp and blender. – this can be changed of course, but good defaults are important to addoption.

More recent versions (at least sice mid-2005) have a right-click menu which includes tiling controls. As for shortcuts, they’re (mostly) good shortcuts. They just don’t play nice with anything else.

I loves Ion3 and have no intention of using anything else, as long as there’s a package or it will still compile.

No discussion of Ion would be complete without mention of the lunatic dictator that rules the project with an iron fist of paranoid trademark protectionism.

It’s a situation that has more in common with XFree86 than with IceWeasel. It isn’t about branding, it’s about control. We don’t like self-righteous control freaks in the free software community. Fork that!

From one point of view, you have to sympathize with him. He has strong views on WMs, and he just wants anything called Ion to be as he wants it. He has no particular problem with people forking the code, putting in mouse gestures, and calling it (say) Zeon.

People like this are all part of the rich pattern of variety on Open Source, and we should appreciate them even when we disagree with them. Maybe we should appreciate them especially when we disagree with them? Without them, it would be a much poorer and more conformist place. There are people who work well in groups and accept suggestion and compromise. And then there are the curmugeons. We need them too.

So lets hear it for curmugeons in general, and this one in particular!

Yeah that is why I use wmii. Never got a chance to use ion3 because around the time I heard about it, it got pulled from Gentoo’s Portage system due to the author’s *ahem* requests. I read somewhere that wmii was a good substitute and have been very happy with it ever since.

I’ve used ion2 for a while, but nowadays I prefer wmii (a similar tiling window manager), because it handles the windows more dynamically, instead of letting the user do all the work of sizing and placing the windows.